Was I the only one feeling sad at the end for the protagonist about there being no females of his kind anywhere in the world?

Given the way squid procreate, it's probably just as well.

Yeah, nature is gross. Ick.

This story filled me with a vague sense of Lovecraftian dread. I don't know, something about giant sentient sea-beasts and mad scientists playing God....guh. I wasn't really able to sympathize for the protagonist; I was too busy fearing for my sanity.

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"Technology: a word we use to describe something that doesn't work yet."

I've only been listening to PodCastle for 4 months or so, and have to say this episode has pushed me over the edge. I now find myself needing to donate some $ and to leave a comment about the awesomeness of Ferret Steinmetz's handiwork. Nicely done, kudos, bravo, and encore please! Thank you PodCastle for serving up such fabulous and delicious morsels of fantasy. You are a continuous delight in my morning commute.

I thought this story was awesome too. I especially like the ending and the references to invaders as crops. I don't normally cheer for giant sea monsters, but when I do, I prefer to cheer for intelligent man-eating Kraken.

I'm a sucker for any story that takes us behind the goggles of a nonhuman character. This was very well done. The perspective is natural but the differences are easy enough for my land-dwelling, non-squid brain to understand.

This was in Beneath Ceaseless Skies? Huh...I listen to their podcast as well, and I haven't heard this one. It's just as well, because I probably wouldn't have heard Norm Sherman's awesome narrating. I would like to read it again, though, to get the full impact. Giant Squid and evil mad-scientist-gods rock!

Yay! Loved it. A bit bumpy in the beginning getting my Think-Like-A-Kraken hat straight, but form then on it was a rollicking, boat-crushing (here I originally typed "oat-crushing" which makes me want to put Son in a little Quaker hat), good time! And Eytanz, no you were not the only one. I am holding out for the Creighton solution. Seriously wonderful story. PodCastle rocks my world!

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“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”Ursula K. LeGuin

I'm not quite so easily sold on a story that having a giant squid will guarantee I like it, but if you make that squid the POV character, add in a mad scientist creator, armies of crops to eat, and a religion based on gross misinterpretation of observable facts, and with all that combined I could hardly dislike it. And, well, Ferret's a hell of a writer, so he actually managed to do this premise justice.

I don't think there was anything I disliked about this one. I liked Son's confrontation with his god, Dysmas's realization that he coudn't control this squid. I liked the father's convoluted interpretation of the religion (especially Dysmas's "fertilization" of the eggs), and the fact that he had not realized that Dysmas was just another crop, expecting him to be huge because Twofather had been so tiny when he'd last seen him. I liked how the world order isn't exactly explained, because how would this little one know about it? I liked how the mother squid was not at all motherly in our apely view of the world because the family dynamic would certainly be different.

The one thing I didn't really understand is, if Dysmas didn't want the squids to breed (which I assume is the case from the destructino of the fertilized eggs), then why did he put a fertile male and fertile female in the same space? Like most forms of birth control, dropping blankets of poison over an egg field is (apparently) not 100% effective.

This was in Beneath Ceaseless Skies? Huh...I listen to their podcast as well, and I haven't heard this one.

It hasn't been on the BCS podcast. Since they started podcasting, they only podcast one story for every 2 in text, and I don't think they had the podcast at the beginning. Maybe it'll be podcast later, but it hasn't yet.

I thoughouly enjoyed this story. The shout outs to every big squid reference and the personification is beutiffully done, with not just thoughts and feelings but food sources and religion. And the lesson of our responsibility to our "creations" rather than the other way around. Besides who could not love a sentient giant squid?

This one had me and never lost me. My only complaint is that it should have run on Escape Pod instead. It's totally science-fiction, from the engineered creature's POV.

Clearly you can see the proper home for this thing is PseudoPod. Tentacles aside, it's the story of a man-eating monster who slowly has everything that he holds dear stripped from him. When he has nothing left but shaken faith, he confronts and then consumes his god.

Clearly you can see the proper home for this thing is PseudoPod. Tentacles aside, it's the story of a man-eating monster who slowly has everything that he holds dear stripped from him. When he has nothing left but shaken faith, he confronts and then consumes his god.

It felt like it was written for Drabblecast. Giant Squids are very near and dear to Norm's heart!